Cover Reveal & Giveaway: The Artisans by Julie Reece

 Welcome to the Cover Reveal for

The Artisans by Julie Reece

presented by Month9Books!

Be sure to enter the giveaway found at the end of the post!

They say death can be beautiful. But after the death of her mother, seventeen-year-old RAVEN WEATHERSBY gives up her dream of becoming a fashion designer, barely surviving life in the South Carolina lowlands.

To make ends meet, Raven works after school as a seamstress creating stunning works of fashion that often rival the great names of the day.

Instead of making things easier on the high school senior, her stepdad's drinking leads to a run in with the highly reclusive heir to the Maddox family fortune, Gideon Maddox.
But Raven's stepdad's drying out and in no condition to attend the meeting with Maddox. So Raven volunteers to take his place and offers to repay the debt in order to keep the only father she's ever known out of jail, or worse.

Gideon Maddox agrees, outlining an outrageous demand: Raven must live in his home for a year while she designs for Maddox Industries' clothing line, signing over her creative rights.

Her handsome young captor is arrogant and infuriating to the nth degree, and Raven can't imagine working for him, let alone sharing the same space for more than five minutes.

But nothing is ever as it seems. Is Gideon Maddox the monster the world believes him to be? And can he stand to let the young seamstress see him as he really is?

The Artisans is a delectably rich, layered and dark YA Southern Gothic inspired by Jeanne Marie Leprince de Beaumont's classic Beauty and the Beast.

"The Artisans has all the elements I love - spooky intrigue, strong friendships, and a romantic tension to be savored." ~ Wendy Higgins, New York Times bestselling author of the Sweet Evil trilogy.

Title: The Artisans
Publication date: May 2015
Publisher: Month9Books, LLC.
Author: Julie Reece

Born in Ohio, I lived next to my grandfather’s horse farm until the fourth grade. Summers were about riding, fishing and make-believe, while winter brought sledding and ice-skating on frozen ponds. Most of life was magical, but not all.

I struggled with multiple learning disabilities, did not excel in school. I spent much of my time looking out windows and daydreaming. In the fourth grade (with the help of one very nice teacher) I fought dyslexia for my right to read, like a prince fights a dragon in order to free the princess locked in a tower, and I won.

Afterwards, I read like a fiend. I invented stories where I could be the princess... or a gifted heroine from another world who kicked bad guy butt to win the heart of a charismatic hero. Who wouldn’t want to be a part of that? Later, I moved to Florida where I continued to fantasize about superpowers and monsters, fabricating stories (my mother called it lying) and sharing them with my friends.

Then I thought I’d write one down...

Hooked, I’ve been writing ever since. I write historical, contemporary, urban fantasy, adventure, and young adult romances. I love strong heroines, sweeping tales of mystery and epic adventure... which must include a really hot guy. My writing is proof you can work hard to overcome any obstacle. Don’t give up. I say, if you write, write on!

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Review: Thy Kingdom Fall (After Eden #1) by Austin Dragon

Thy Kingdom Fall is the provocative, debut thriller of author Austin Dragon--a dramatic mix of politics, religion, and intrigue set over 75 years in the future. In 2089, a former skin-runner-turned-star-reporter investigates the Washington DC daylight murder of the most powerful political king-maker in the nation. It is just the tip of a wider conspiracy and the start of a chain of events leading to the explosion of World War III. It is the first in the epic After Eden series.

I am one of those people that think DNF statuses for books is a cop out. For those of you who don't know what DNF means, it's short for Did Not Finish. Now, sure, there are books that are hard to get into but 99.998% of the time, I'll push through. That way, I can at least give a full, informed evaluation of the book in question. But then I came across this book.

I first received Thy Kingdom Fall over a year ago from the publisher and I was super excited to dive into it. I thought that the premise was interesting and I was so glad that I was chosen to give it a read. That first day of reading, it was almost painful. I was forcing myself to read just one more sentence. Reading should be enjoyable. Reading became torture. So I put the book down. I do this every once in a while because sometimes, I'm just not in the right mindset. I picked it back up a few weeks later but had the same results again. And then again. And again. Over and over. I was on a nightmarish ferris wheel that no one would let me off of.

Finally, I put the book down for 3 months. I didn't think about it, didn't even glance at the cover. That was at the beginning of August. And now it's the 26th and finally, I'm going to stop beating a dead horse. I can't go any further with this novel. 

Now keep in mind, there are tons of people who really enjoyed this book and you might be one of them. If it sounds awesome, check it out and let me know how it goes. I hope it goes better for you than it did for me. 

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Cover Reveal & Giveaway: VESSEL by Lisa T. Cresswell

Welcome to the Cover Reveal for

VESSEL by Lisa T. Cresswell

presented by Month9Books!

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The sun exploded on On April 18, 2112 in a Class X solar storm the likes of which humankind had never seen.
They had exactly nineteen minutes to decide what to do next.

They had nineteen minutes until a geomagnetic wave washed over the Earth, frying every electrical device created by humans, blacking out entire continents, and every satellite in their sky.

Nineteen minutes to say goodbye to the world they knew, forever, and to prepare for a new Earth, a new Sun.

Generations after solar storms destroyed nearly all human technology on Earth, humans reverted to a middle ages-like existence, books are burned as heresy, and all knowledge of the remaining technology is kept hidden by a privileged few called the Reticents.

Alana, a disfigured slave girl, and Recks, a traveling minstrel and sometimes- thief, join forces to bring knowledge and books back to the human race. But when Alana is chosen against her will to be the Vessel, the living repository for all human knowledge, she must find the strength to be what the world needs even if it's the last thing she wants.

Title: Vessel
Publication date: May 2015
Publisher: Month9Books, LLC.
Author: Lisa T. Cresswell

Lisa, like most writers, began scribbling silly notes, stories, and poems at a very young age. Born in North Carolina, the South proved fertile ground to her imagination with its beautiful white sand beaches and red earth. In fifth grade, she wrote, directed and starred in a play "The Queen of the Nile" at school, despite the fact that she is decidedly un-Egyptian looking. Perhaps that's why she went on to become a real life archaeologist?

Unexpectedly transplanted to Idaho as a teenager, Lisa learned to love the desert and the wide open skies out West. This is where her interest in cultures, both ancient and living, really took root, and she became a Great Basin archaeologist. However, the itch to write never did leave for long. Her first books became the middle grade fantasy trilogy, The Storyteller Series. Her first traditionally published work, Hush Puppy, is now available from Featherweight Press.

Lisa still lives in Idaho with her family and a menagerie of furry critters that includes way too many llamas!

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Review: Four Weeks Till Forever (The Pryce Family #1) by Nadia Lee

He's never met a woman he wants to spend his life with...

The man: Billionaire playboy Mark Pryce.

The problem: A "real" date for his family's Fourth of July party...or he'll have to attend with the heiress his mother's picked out for him to marry.

The woman: His best friend's executive assistant, Hilary Rosenberg--the only one who can save him from this fate worse than death.

...she is convinced good men are a thing of the past.

Disillusioned by a series of painful relationships, Hilary has no interest in dating Mark--even as a pretense--for the next four weeks. He's too sexy, too smart, altogether too attractive--and a sure bet to break her heart. But she owes him a favor, and she always pays her debts.

When their charade threatens to turn into a happily ever after, can a reformed playboy convince his wary Cinderella that fairy tale endings really can come true?

I'm just going to hop right in here and get started ... no weirdo analogies this time! I was really excited about this one and for me, it fell a little flat. It's not that it wasn't good ... it was ... it just wasn't great. The novel felt a little shallow. Not shallow like a person who is self absorbed but shallow as in it didn't really have any depth. I guess that I wish it was more gritty. This chick (Hilary) is going through a horrible time! I wanted to feel sorry for her or some kind of anguish, sadness ... something. I just wasn't invested in the book. 

Don't get me wrong, it's an interesting read and it kept me captivated but it always felt just a little incomplete. I didn't know the characters as well as I wanted to, I was always wondering about motivations for their actions or why didn't they do THIS instead of THAT. This could all be my fault. This novel is a spin-off of another series by this author and while the story isn't contingent upon those other series, maybe the background info from them would have solved my problems with this one. 

I don't know. This just didn't blow my skirt up. I wouldn't be opposed to trying another novel from this author and seeing what happened. It may be a totally different experience since I've met the characters now. Who knows, but I'm open to it in the future.

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Review: This is Falling by Ginger Scott

First, I had to remember how to breathe. Then, I had to learn how to survive. Two years, three months and sixteen days had passed since I was the Rowe Stanton from before, since tragedy stole my youth and my heart went along with it.

When I left for college, I put a thousand miles between my future and my past. I’d made a choice—I was going to cross back to the other side, to live with the living. I just didn’t know how.

And then I met Nate Preeter.

An All-American baseball player, Nate wasn’t supposed to notice a ghost-of-a-girl like me. But he did. He shouldn’t want to know my name. But he did. And when he learned my secret and saw the scars it left behind, he was supposed to run. But he didn’t.

My heart was dead, and I was never supposed to belong to anyone. But Nate Preeter had me feeling, and he made me want to be his. He showed me everything I was missing.

And then he showed me how to fall.

This is one of the many New Adult novels that I've grown to love over the past few months and it's one of my favorites, for sure. I thought that after a while, they would all start kind of bleeding into the last one but that hasn't happened yet. 

Now, Ginger Scott writes an amazingly flawed character. Rowe (the main character) is unbelievably messed up. She has a long list of things she's not proud of, issues from the past and hang-ups about herself. It was really a fascinating journey that the author took us on. She made it seem like there was really no way out for Rowe and then we were able to walk beside her as she tried to traverse basically a brand new life. A new chapter, a new beginning. Being that Rowe is so terribly screwed up, I still loved her. I thought that she was a great female lead and I can't imagine this book being written any other way. 

I really enjoyed the alternating POV with Rowe and Nate, sometimes that can really suck the life out of a plot but it worked wonderfully with what was going on. And I think that is mostly due to the dynamic between Nate and Rowe. The chemistry is adorable and you can't help but laugh and cry along with the characters. 

I think that I read somewhere that this is going to be the beginning of a series and I really hope that is actually true because Ginger Scott really set herself up to have an amazing next book if it is about Nate's brother ... hint, hint. 

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Cover Reveal & Giveaway: Horror Business by Ryan Craig Bradford

Welcome to the Cover Reveal for

Horror Business by Ryan Craig Bradford

presented by Month9Books!

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Armed with a passion for classic B-grade horror movies, a script co-written by his twin brother, and a wicked crush on his death-obsessed neighbor; hardcore horror fan Jason Nightshade must finish his student film.

But his plans are derailed when the children of suburban Silver Creek start disappearing – his twin brother among them. Battling a possessed video camera, a crazy zombie dog, a monstrous bully, and a frighteningly broken down family life, Jason embarks on a mission to find his lost brother so the two can write an ending for his story.

As any horror fan knows, saving the day won't be easy, as Jason finds himself forced to face the real world where death isn't just a splash of fake blood on a camera lens.

Title: Horror Business
Publication date: February 2015
Publisher: Month9Books, LLC.
Author: Ryan Craig Bradford

Ryan grew up in Park City, Utah. His fiction has appeared in Quarterly West, Paper Darts, Vice, Monkeybicycle and [PANK]. He currently lives in San Diego where he acts as Creative Director for the nonprofit literary arts organization So Say We All. He’s the co-editor of the anthology Last Night on Earth and founder of the literary horror journal, Black Candies.

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Spotlight and Giveaway: Light Up the Night (The Night Stalkers #5) by M.L. Buchman

Trisha O’Malley rebelled against her affluent family by joining the U.S. Army’s secret helicopter regiment, the 160th SOAR. Now a Chief Warrant Officer, she found her toughest fight yet in the pilot’s seat of an MH-6M attack helicopter.

William Wallace Bruce is an undercover CIA agent who doesn’t trust the military. But when the Horn of Africa is threatened by Somali pirates, Trisha flies out to recover ships and hostages … including one very ungrateful Will. Everything about Trisha triggers his mistrust: her elusive past, her wild energy, and her proclivity for flying past safety's edge. Even as the heat between them turns into passion's fire, Bill and Trisha must team up to confront their pasts and survive Somalia's pirate lords.

Trisha looked up at Billy. His narrowed eyes revealed that he was indeed totally perplexed.

It was perfectly clear to her, and she just figured out that meant she was too damn stupid to live. She shrugged to herself, feeling the warm weight of his large hands still resting on her shoulders.

Well, stupid is something I'm really good at, she had to admit to herself. With one foot she shoved the door to her cabin closed until the latch clicked. Then putting a hand on either side of his neck, Tricia pulled his face down to hers.

His hesitation didn't last long, then the kiss became everything she remembered from the first one. Power, heat, strength.

And then it became more. When he folded his arms around her and held her tight against him as they teased each other's lips, she was just gone.

She'd never felt such a thing before. In Billy's arms, Tricia O'Malley felt ... safe. As if someone else would take care of the world, just for awhile. That was so foreign, she almost pushed away. Then she changed her mind and leaned closer because it felt so damn good.

Trisha wished she was still wearing the stupid towel, so that she could just let it slide ever so slowly to the floor like some heart-fluttering romance heroin. But she was dressed now, so she went for plan B.

Sliding her hands down to his waist, she tugged Billy's T-shirt free and dragged it off over his head. If she could have shredded it with her teeth, she would have.

When she reached bare skin, rather than throwing herself against it, she hesitated. A desecration of multiple scars ran across one of the most beautiful chest she ever seen. Two obvious bullet holes, one by his waist another terrifyingly near his heart. A third, old one deep on his arm, just below the shoulder -- the one Ralph of Detroit had given him. Thin white lines crisscrossed as if he'd been whipped or dragged over rough ground.

And one deep line that matched the scar across his face, as if a knife had been dragged diagonally down from his ear, over his chin, then sliced him from clavicle most of the way down his ribs below one breast.

Tricia look so slowly back up to his eyes, which watched her intently from just inches away.

Awaiting her reaction.

She didn't know what to think. She'd been all freaked out over a bullet that hadn't even penetrated her armor. He appeared to have been tortured and clearly been close to death several times.

At her continued inspection, he shrugged slightly as if to say, "It's who I am."

She watched a shiver ripple over the skin as she stroked a single finger down the long line of the deep knife cut.

Then she leaned in and kissed it. The shiver turned into a soft groan that rippled across his magnificent chest.

It was the last sound they made.

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M. L. Buchman has over 25 novels in print. His military romantic suspense books have been named Barnes & Noble and NPR “Top 5 of the year” and Booklist “Top 10 of the Year.” In addition to romance, he also writes contemporaries, thrillers, and fantasy and science fiction.

In among his career as a corporate project manager he has: rebuilt and single-handed a fifty-foot sailboat, both flown and jumped out of airplanes, designed and built two houses, and bicycled solo around the world.

He is now a full-time writer, living on the Oregon Coast with his beloved wife. He is constantly amazed at what you can do with a degree in Geophysics.

 

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Review: Nora Roberts Land (Dare Valley #1) by Ava Miles

Journalist Meredith Hale’s ex-husband claimed her Nora Roberts addiction gave her unrealistic expectations about marriage, and she believed him. All dreams of happily ever after—or Nora Roberts Land as her mother calls it—went up in smoke. But when her family asks her to temporarily help their Dare Valley, Colorado newspaper, she decides it’s time to change her life and prove her ex wrong. She’s determined to find her own small-town Nora Roberts hero, prove that true love exists, and publish a story about her quest.

War correspondent Tanner McBride has just returned stateside to work for a major newspaper, and the last thing he expects is blackmail. Yet, before he can even unpack, he’s headed to Colorado. His assignment? Make his boss’s ex-wife fall for him and then break her heart. Her article about discovering love à la Nora might air dirty laundry about her marriage to the media mogul, threatening his senate run. The mogul wants Meredith stopped, and he makes sure Tanner has no choice in the matter.

When the two meet, the sparks between them are undeniable. Meredith, who vowed never to date another journalist, begins to succumb. Could Tanner be her Nora Roberts hero? As they work together to uncover the truth behind a suspicious death, the depth of their feelings unfolds and both realize they’ve kept their secrets for far too long. But before the truth can be revealed, their investigation takes a deadly turn, one that might make Meredith’s personal Nora Roberts Land go up in flames.

I love romantic suspense novels. Just adore them. I was excited to see this one on Amazon the other day and I just had to have it for some reason. I don't really know for sure what called to me with this novel, I'm not a huge Nora Roberts fan. Sure, I've read a few of her novels but not every single one and I don't really seek them out. But I connected with the title and the premise, I guess. I thought that the idea of a Nora Roberts Land was pretty interesting and I was so right. 

I really enjoyed the characters that Ava Miles created. Meredith was sassy and funny and the journey that Ava took us on to introduce us to Meredith was perfect. I love it when an author will give you this super screwed up character and then bring you with them on the long haul to self-realization and healing. In my opinion, it's really the best thing about reading ... it's why I pick up a book and it's most certainly why when I find one of these super-talented authors, that I stick with them. Not every author has that ... thing. That spark. That magic, to pour into a novel and just bring it alive. Anyway, Ava Miles has it. I also really enjoyed how Miles wrote her bad guy ... I instantly hated him and wanted him to suffer horribly ... I won't tell you if he did ... you need to read it and enjoy the ride.

This is definitely one of the better romantic suspense authors out there. I'll be picking up more from this author in the very near future. I can't wait to see what she comes up with in the future but whatever it is, count me in!!

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